Monday's Toddler School Events

I'm a little late posting this but thought I'd share some of what we did for school time on Monday. Our physical play was baby basketball, which was just throwing bean bags into a basket. You can see she her playing above. I was surprised that she didn't stick with it very long, though. She preferred to throw the beanbags in the air, rather than in the basket. However, it was close to naptime and she is very defiant when sleepy. For music, I taught her the fingerplay "Caterpillar Song". We are focusing on the letters B and C, so we've also been looking at butterflies and caterpillars. Here's the lyrics to the song:

One little caterpillar crawled on my shoe,Another came along and now there are two.Two little caterpillars crawled on my kneeAnother came along and now there are three.Three little caterpillars crawled on the floor.Another came along and then there were four.Four little caterpillars watch them crawl awayThey'll all turn into butterflies some fine day.

Our Montessori focus activity was opening/closing drawers. The child practices closing a drawer until they can do so without making any noise. She liked doing this and did it quite well.

The picture above shows her playing in her "Indoor Sandbox". I dumped some rice into a plastic bin and let her have fun. She LOVES any of these type of exercises and will spend more time doing them than any other toy or activity. She practiced spooning the rice and pouring it between cups.

We did try to play hide the beanbag but it wasn't a hit. She hasn't shown any interest in hide and seek type games.

She has always loved brushing her teeth and since it is Dental Care Month I thought we'd focus a little more on it. Like I said, she's been brushing her teeth since before she turned one but I worry she doesn't do a good job and she won't let me brush them for her. The research I've done has said to let her brush if possible--but I worry about her not doing well enough and her teeth decaying. People say, what's the big deal-they are just baby teeth. Sorry, but I don't want her going around with cavities for the next several years. Hopefully genetics will come into play-my husband nor myself have ever had a cavity. Now here comes one of my little mommy secrets-you know the areas that you don't want to write about on a mommy blog. Just the type of thing Nanny 911 would be talking to you about. Okay...here goes...confession time. I let my daughter go to sleep with a sippy cup of milk. I've tried stopping her cold turkey but eventually gave in. I've tried diluting it down or just adding water and she just threw the cup across the room and screamed "milk". So our big focus for dental care this week is going to be getting the sippy cup away. I'm embarrassed to admit that I let her do this. Some of you know she has sleep problems and I think that the desire to get sleep led to this decision. Please don't judge too harshly. However, I will say that she does not leave any milk in her mouth and doesn't go to sleep with the sippy cup in her mouth. She takes it to bed, drinks it as she is falling to sleep, removes it, and then goes to sleep. Therefore, really how is it any different than having a glass of milk before going to bed?

We did a letter B box which was just a box filled with objects that start with the letter B-balloon, banana, ball...

For our Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom Activity we watched some videos at You Tube.
BooksChicka-Chicka Boom Boom. The first one my daughter's favorite. I liked it too.






Be sure to check back tomorrow. We will have Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom activities all 5 days this week. I participate in Teaching Tiny Tots weekly reading challenge and this is the book for this week. The link to the challenge is http://teachingtinytots.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/reading-theme-challenge-chicka-chicka/.